Customer Reviews

Monster Manual V (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

All in all this is a good book. It's not a great book, but it's a solid additional Monster Resource.

I'll hit you with the bad, first. There are three section devoted to already printed monsters with class levels: vampires, kuo-tao and hobgoblins. Now I can understand how this could be useful to some people, but it seems to me it should either be a web supplement or a separate book. Each of these sections takes up more room than a regular monster entry. That means you miss out on several new monsters for each one of these entries. Some of these spots include classes from some the other popular supplements, like the complete books. For me this is a positive because it makes them seem more unique, so I might use them. If you don't own the books the classes are from, they include enough information to still make them usable.

The other bad, was the two maps that were included. Each takes up about a page and were published separately on their website. Which means they simply take up room.

Now the good. Lot's of new monsters, most of which could easily appear on Material Plane. The range of difficulty is vast. They are fun ideas, that would probably not be apparent to players running into them, and seem very easy to run. Several have stats on how to make them familiars or mounts.

Two of the biggest fears were of the inclusion of Mind Flayers who follow Thoon and the Dragon Game. I actually have found these to be the two biggest positives in the book. The Thoon Mind Flayers are not, for the most part, Mind Flayers with Character levels. They're different types of Mind Flayers and Mind Flayer creations. They're all really fun, with varying CR. They're written as a separate sect, but they really don't have to be. There's even an Elder Brain with a CR of 15. This way you can have an elder brain battle before getting to Epics.

The Dragon Game, takes up a little too much room for my liking. There's a lot of fluff here. Dig through and you'll find a real gem. The template that can be applied takes away sorcerer levels form the dragons and replaces them with special abilities that are simple to use and make them seem more like dragons. It also gives you easy ways to make dragons a more intense and plot oriented part of your campaign world.

I bought this more to round out the collection than thinking it would have a lot of high-class monsters to use. I was right. Most of the monsters are either regular humanoids with levels and feats tacked onto them or very esoteric monsters that would have little impact on a regular game. That being said, the production values and artwork remain impressive, and I would reccommend it for the hard-core gamer. People on a budget could use their money better elsewhere.

Once the 4th edition came out, I found a lot of good 3X edition books on sale. The 3.5 Monster Manuals are great - not really compatible with the new rules, but they give you good ideas for monsters. I bought the whole series, Monster Manual I through V, and the Fiendish Codex, Hordes of the Abyss, and the Lords of Madness. All good!

Well, I thought this book was very good, some new ideas and a nice format, and the monsters actually seem real, not a bunch of made up things just to fill a book. I really liked it until.......

Unfortunately I found out a few days ago at GenCon , that Wizards is putting out Dungeons and Dragons Version 4 in May 2008, so Version 3.5 will be retired. Be ware before you go gung ho on buying a lot more 3.5 stuff.

One of the things I love most about D&D is monster books. I was really, really disappointed with MM IV, but this book was far better. Though I personally dislike the new format of the stat block, most of the *new* creatures in this book are well-made.

Unfortunately, like the MM IV, this book still relies on filling itself with leveled versions of humanoid monsters that first appeared in other monster manuals. Likewise, "lair maps" return in this volume, which have no business in a Monster Manual. I also dislike the Sample Encounters included for each monster; at best this should be no more than a 3-sentence paragraph, as should the ..In *Campaign World* entries. Overall, most of these entries shouldn't take up more than 3/4ths of page, but most take up a minimum of two pages.

Overall, the unique monster content is good - really good. Unfortunately, the style of the book could have been much better, and the rehashed humanoids tends to drag down my opinion of the book overall.

To be honest, the Tome of Horrors series is much better than the MM3 onward.

This is a very very solid addition to your dnd library. It has a LOT of good monsters. The new mind flayer section is amazingly good, and I really like the hobgoblin/kuo-toa sections. However the vampire section is just vampire template added to a normal class, nothing special and a waste of space. Also I do not like the added "mini-adventure maps" for some sections as they take up space and no players will use them as well as very few and desperate DMs.

This is a very nicely done book of monsters - many of them are very strange and unusual. One of my favorites is the mockery bug, basically a disgusting bug-like creature that lives inside a host (the image of the creature bursting out its human shell through a persons head is one of the bloodiest, graphic pieces of art in a D&D book you'll find - well done!). Many of the monsters are very creative and interesting to read about - the undead fool is just creepy weird, hopefully your PC will never encounter him. The artwork in this book is top notch all the way, better than just about any other monster book I've seen in the 3rd edition line. I definitely recommend this book for anyone looking to populate their world and dungeons with interesting monsters.

A decently good book. Unlike most Monster Manuals, they actually went to a lot of effort to give a good spread of CRs in the book, both overall, and within each category of monster. So if you're playing an Illithid campaign, they have a whole range of themed monsters for you to use as a DM. They also have a good number of high CR monsters, which is an area of D&D WOTC typically doesn't devote a lot of attention to.

On the downside, 4th Edition D&D will make this book obsolete in less than a year, and there's not a very good selection of monsters as playable races in the book.

Lots of fluff, as previously stated. But as the last of the 3ed MM, this is worth the purchase IMO.